A folk-rock Thoreau, Michigan's Ben Schneider has a near mystical vision of America's wilderness, a place of peaks and prairies, "sacred dunes" and rivers that "wind on for ever". The production of his debut is appropriately epic, its echoing acoustic guitars and yearning, Fleet Foxy vocals mixed with cowboy cattle calls and Pawnee chants. Communion with nature and the quest for the ideal woman are joined on She Lit a Fire and Ends of the Earth, there are playful nods to wild west "dime novels", while gamelan bells and sitars appear unexpectedly in the sonic torrent. Something original.
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Neil Spencer
Neil Spencer is a writer and an astrologer for The Observer
Neil Spencer
The GuardianTramp